bczoom said:
looking at the average age of our membership, there's got to be a few of us out here. How many have had Kidney stones?
They aren't age specific. Mine were found at age 23 when I started experiencing severe hangovers after as little as one glass of wine. Obvious impaired kidney function, the kidneys weren't filtering junk out of the bloodstream. The stones may have been there a while before one plugged up a kidney.
That was when ultasonic shattering (whatever it's called) was experimental and not very effective, so after unsucessfully trying that, they cut me open "big enough to get both hands back in there by that kidney". Left a scar from my navel to nearly the back side of my waist.
In nearly 40 years since, I've several times had the experience of feeling borderline poisoned, then passing a stone and feeling fine again.
Now there have been several 'poisoned' episodes in the past couple of years, each accompanied by minor pain that feels like old shrapnel poking me. The shrapnel feeling has been persistent, from barely noticeable to where I finally took a Motrin to allow sleep. At that point I decided to get them removed, hopefully by sonic disintegration.
The xray tech said my pix look like astronomy photos, full of bright spots everywhere. Yep, that's what I'm feeling. Hopefully that will all be gone by summer.